This is an excellent example of a moderately well-loaded MITS Altair 8800 from circa 1981. It comes with a Pertec 3812D-1-810A dual 8-inch single-sided floppy drive unit. Recall that Pertec bought MITS towards the end of its life. I don\'t know if the computer was made before or after that event. The design and artwork of the drive unit makes a good match with the computer itself. These items are presumed not to work out of the box. Making them work is up to you.

This computer was purchased by Larry Niven, but mostly used by his wife. It bears his autograph on the lid and the rear panel. More on that below.

The pair are in moderately good shape. There is hardened tape goo on the computer\'s bezel. On the computer is a broken LED and a broken switch. The drive unit has a broken switch. They are also quite dusty on the inside and the fan filters are crumbly. I have not powered up these devices. You, the buyer, will be expected to take all the cards out and go over the power supply with appropriate diagnostic tools and make sure it\'s behaving correctly. The same goes for the drive unit. These have not been powered up for years and things, particularly capacitors, change with age. The S100 cards inside are in excellent cosmetic shape.

From right to left, here are the cards:

1. MITS CPU BD i8080 processor board. With white ceramic, gold-lidded i8080. No soldermask.
2. California Computer Systems 2016B 16K SRAM memory. Uses four banks of eight MM2114 chips each.
3. MITS 88-16MCS 16K SRAM memory. Uses four banks of eight SEMI 4200 chips each.
4. Industrial Micro Systems 16K SRAM. Uses four banks of eight Intel P2114L chips each.
5. MITS 88-PCM 2K PROM board. The markings on the PROMs are as follows from left to right:
   1. Altair Boot #0 6-DEC-81, 12-DEC-81
   2. Altair Boot #1 6-DEC-81
   3. Altair Boot #2 6-DEC-81
   4. empty
   5. LRB 0 6-DEC
   6. LRB 1 6-DEC-81 (some partially erased unreadable markings are visible)
   7. empty
   8. 11/14/81 18:01
6. Polymorphic Systems Poly 88 Video Terminal Interface
7. MITS 88-2 SIO REV 0 2-port RS232 serial board
8. MITS 88-SIOB Serial TTL board
9. MITS 88-ACR cassette tape interface (piggybacked on the 88-SIOB).

You will notice that there is no floppy controller in the Altair. That\'s just how I found it. I don\'t have any floppy controllers handy at the moment.

The dual drive unit is in good shape. There\'s not much to be said about it. It needs to be gone over to clean out the dust and make sure the power supply is up to spec. I would have pictures of the inside, but I ran out of photo slots.

What makes this computer really exciting is that it was once owned by Larry Niven. Larry Niven has long been a member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (www.lasfs.org). This group has existed since 1934 and was the starting point for many science fiction and fantasy authors. Larry Niven is one of them. This computer was purchased by him, but mainly used by his wife. In time, she got a newer computer and this one was made the club computer. It served in that capacity for many years until it too was replaced and was taken in by another club member who didn\'t want to see it parted out or thrown away. Fast-forward to 2008. I was contacted by that other club member to liquidate his collection. We went to Larry Niven\'s house whereupon he autographed this computer on the lid and the rear. I don\'t know if the drive unit was used by the Nivens with this computer, but it matches and is from the same collection.

More photographs in better resolution can be found at Information on the cards and links to documentation is there too.

The computer, unpacked, weighs 29 pounds. The floppy drive unit weighs about 60 pounds (I don\'t know for sure. It exceeds the capacity of my shipping scale.) They will be packed and shipped separately. Ordinarily I pack what I sell myself, but I do not have the materials to pack these things safely. I will therefore take them to a shop that specializes in this sort of thing. Of course, you can always pick up the computer and drives yourself and all packing and shipping charges will be waived.

On the subject of shipping charges, doesn\'t make it easy to estimate costs when the goods are heavy and will be split up into multiple packages to keep under the 70-pound limit. The flat fee you see is a wild guess for packing material, packing labor, and shipping. See the payment instructions below for more information.